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Written by Kimberly Eddy
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Friday, 06 August 2010 00:00 |
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| Bavarian Wedding |
| Stan Wayman |
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Yesterday, I posted a bit about having a great marriage. I hardly feel like an "expert" in that area, except maybe in that we were able to go from having a bad foundation and a rocky start to things being really awesome as we near our 18 year anniversary. Truly, the best marriage counselor of all is the Lord, and He tells us that if any of us need wisdom for anything, we are to ask and He will provide (James 1:5). This verse is my favorite parenting verse, as well as my favorite marriage verse. In fact, it is one of my favorite all purpose practical verses in the Bible.
I have been having an email exchange with a reader on the topic of having a great marriage and also on balancing motherhood and marriage. The question that started it all was essentially this:
When I am focusing on my husband, I feel like I am ignoring my children. When I am focusing on my children, I feel like I am ignoring my husband. When I focus on me, I feel like I am ignoring everyone. Is there a secret to finding balance or am I just missing something?
Have you been there and done that too?
When we were surprised with the news that we were expecting our firstborn, just a few months after we got married, I wanted to be the best mom I could be, and I wanted to not let my marriage slide either. I had been reading lots of books about having a godly marriage, and so I knew what to do, but applying that knowledge wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be. :-) God did say that it was not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Our men need us, though sometimes the needs of our children may seem more obvious than the needs of our husbands. Maybe we find it easier to dismiss our husband's needs becuse he's an adult, and the children are young. Certainly, children do need their moms (and dads), and so we need to find a balance here.
If you didn't read some of my foundational "tips" yesterday, you may want to read that first, as I feel that is essential to us having a great marriage, and really sort of sets the stage for the rest of this...This is probably not a complete list, just some "off of the top of my head" thoughts about what has helped in this home here. If you have other tips to share, just leave a comment! I'd love to hear them, and I'm sure others will be blessed too.
Top Tips for Balancing Me, Motherhood, and Marriage
1. Live each day deliberately, with a plan. If you spend all day long simply reacting to the demands made on you, important things inevitably fall through the cracks. Most of what follows here are some plan to do's...things you can try to implement in your day that will help you strike a balance. If we make it a point to spend some time each day on our marriage, and on our parenting, and also recharging our batteries, then we may find we have more energy and time to get us through the days.
2. Plan to Greet Your Husband at the Door. I say Plan to...because sometimes with young children, life does happen. However, decide to implement something that will help him feel like he was missed today (rather than making him feel like he is interrupting your day when he gets home). Some guys don't want to feel like they are being smothered when they walk in, but at least a hug and a kiss at the end of the work day will be a great way to welcome him home.
As a new wife, an older woman once gave me the advice to stop what I was doing an hour before my husband got home from work and look in the mirror. Fix myself up in whatever way he likes, and look nice for him when he gets home. I intended to do this but with five children ages 5 and under at one point, it feel by the wayside. I started to fix myself up a bit several years ago, and after a week, my husband commented, "I like this...it reminds me of when we were first married." I didn't realize he noticed because he didn't say anything when I had let it slip. The thing is, I also felt better by making myself look nice.
Now, I'm not a girly-girl, as you probably gotten from other posts, but I notice that when I am doing a little something to look nicer, I feel like it helps my mind to switch gears for my husband, from focusing exclusively on the kids all day to focusing on my marriage. For most of us ladies, I think half the battle in a marriage is in our heads, and that time we spend brushing the hair, maybe fixing our faces if we wear makeup, and changing out of the sweatshirt with baby barf on it helps us be more wifely when our guy gets home.
I also find it helps to get ready by planning to show my children extra attention in the hours just before daddy comes home, so that they are less needy at that time. This is less and less true as they get older, but it was a necessity when they were young. This may mean, for example, starting dinner earlier so that you can sit down and read a book with them and get the household calmer right before your hubby comes home. This seems to really make a huge different in a guy's stress levels at the end of the day. Do you like walking into the door only to be met with chaos? Me neither. There's a good chance your hubby also doesn't like walking into chaos every day either.
3. Your baby/toddler doesn't need to be held 24/7
Several years ago, my hubby had a relative that we visited out of state for a wedding, and she was bemoaning that their 10 year marriage had lost it's spark since the baby was born 9 months ago. Of course the baby never left her hip, slept in their bed all the time, could only fall asleep on her shoulder, cried if you moved it ever so slightly, and the baby was the center of attention. The spark as gone out, you say? Hmmmm I can't imagine why you have lost that lovin' feeling.
I don't favor strict schedules for babies as some do, but I also don't advocate some of the more radical attachment practices either (I've done both, actually). There's gotta be some balance here. A newborn needs more attention, and will need to be slowly eased into a routine that works with the rest of the family. However, barring some sort of chronic illness, the baby has to adapt to the family, not the entire family adapting their lives around the baby's whims as he or she grows. This could probably be a whole post in an of itself, couldn't it?
4. Me Time is only bad when you spend most of your day on it
I have heard many who are against some mom time, and I've also known others who are always running around to mom activities. When my children were little, I gradually got away from mom time and mom actvities, such that I was home 24/7 with the kids, refusing all breaks and looking down my nose at anyone who embraced mother's morning out-type activities.
After baby number five was born, and I was struggling with post partum depression, I actually talked to my doctor about it. She's a wise woman, I tell you. Instead of doing what most doctors do (writing a prescription) she said to me, "I want you to try something first. I want you to go to get out of the house at least 2x a week, just you." Of course I balked at that. I went home and told my husband who shocked me by saying that he thought it was a great idea, and that he wanted to suggested it but I had been on a rabid "mom time is selfish" sort of kick. He reminded me that I had a lifetime membership to Fitness USA and he suggested I go a few nights a week.
I found that some time away wasn't a bad thing. I can always tell when my "me time" is out of hand because I am tired, grumpy, the kids are wired, and the house is a wreck. This goes for both too little and too much.
Now, most of the time, I spend time each evening in a nice big hot bubble bath in my cast iron clawfoot tub, up to my chin in bubbles, writing out ideas for blog posts on a clipboard on a table my dh made to fit over the tub (wishing for a waterproof laptop. wouldn't that be cool?).
5. Take an interest, as a family, in some of his interests
Remember when you were dating/courting your husband? Remember when you would watch him for hours fix his car, or play baseball, or play video games, or whatever? You didn't care. You just wanted to be with him. After you got married, and the kids started coming, what happened? His hobbies became a source of contention, and not time to be spent together. I'm not saying we have to spend 24/7 together, but I am saying to be open to spending time with him doing not just what you want to do but what he likes to do too.
I loathe sports. There, I said it. However, tomorrow, the kids and I will likely spend at least some time on the couch with daddy, and I'll cuddle up with him, with a big bowl of popcorn between us while we watch some important sports thing Now, he'd never in a million years ask me to sit and watch football or baseball or anything else. He'd not do that, because he knows that I don't like it, but he does like it when I sit and watch with him.
When my hubby started to play on the church's softball league, within a few weeks I had some of the ladies ask me where I was at on Monday nights. Most of the women go to the practices, sit, and watch their hubbies play, with the kids running around and playing too. I started to come to practice and to most of the games, bringing my cooler and blanket like everyone else, and cheering my husband on. I didn't realize how much that meant to him. But, it also meant a lot to the kids. The kids loved seeing daddy play ball, and they loved to see mom cheering him on.
6. Last but definately not least, pray
Pray. Pray, pray pray. Pray. Did I say "Pray"?
Being a wife and mother is a juggling act, one that they don't exactly prepare us for in our younger years. I think that many of the women reading this may even have been raised in broken homes, and so we come into marriage without an example to follow in this area. God is able to give us wisdom and discernment as we seek Him in our marriages. He is the only one able to really change someone's heart (whether it's our heart or hubby's), or to know what is going on inside of someone. Only He knows what someone's true needs are. For this reason, having a great relationship with the Lord is essential to being able to pull of that balance between me, motherhood, and marriage.
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Top Tips for an Awesome Marriage |
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Written by Kimberly Eddy
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Thursday, 05 August 2010 00:00 |
After my post about my wedding day that I shared a while ago, I got an email asking me what I thought was the key to still being happily married for 18 years. I think that is a good question.
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| Good Housekeeping, June 1902 |
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If I were honest, and I'm going to be with my dear husband's permission, I'd have to say we were not always completely happy and lovey-dovey to each other for all of those 18 years of marriage. We didn't have a good foundation, and we weren't really taught much about how to have a good marriage...we basically muddled through and made some mistakes along the way. Praise God, He has enabled us to fix some poor foundations that we had, and enable us to be even more in love as we inch closer to our 19th anniversary. Being in a great church now which purposefully teaches on family issues and how to have a great marriage also helps.
But, more specifically, based on my own private study of the Word, and personal experience, here are my top 5 foundational tips for ladies for having a great marriage...tomorrow, Lord willing, I will post how to balance marriage and motherhood, but I felt we needed this foundational post first.
1. The foundation is in right priorities...God-->Husband-->Children-->everything else.
The Bible, throughout, seems to lay out these priorities for us. We always put God ahead of everything and everyone else, and when we have the right "vertical" relationship, we will have proper horizontal relationships by reason of the time we are spending in His presences, being made into His image....I don't think that putting God first means running around, perpetually busy with activities (I go into more detail in my book, Quiet Times in Loud Households on this point...a whole chapter jus on priorities actually, and a whole book on having a devotional life with the Lord!)...I believe it means, practically speaking, letting His principles in His word govern our lives, and spending time with Him, living a devotional life. Husband comes next, because the Lord said it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18), and it still isn't. Our husbands do need us, even if they don't seem as "helpless" as the children do...and finally we also have a responsibility to raise up our children for Christ. Keeping this in mind will help us.
2. This balance starts in your head, with your thoughts
Come on, now. Most of us, if we were honest (and I'm going to try to be here), have a running internal monologue that seems to set the tone for our day. We talk to ourselves, and maybe even preach to ourselves all day long. This is not bad in and of itself...what we think about can be good or bad, however.
If, when our husband screws up (again ~sigh~), and we mentally run down our checklist of all of his screw ups over our marriage before adding the latest to the list, or we dwell on what he is doing wrong, we will be in a foul mood throughout our days, and our marriage will soon be in trouble. How many of us instead run down the list of all the reasons why we fell in love in the first place? No, we usually choose the lie of the devil, "You know I don't think I ever really did love him..."Running down the list of all that he doesn't do is not going to help you be the kind of wife that encourages him, uplifts him, RESPECTS him, and completes him the way God intended (the same is true, on the other side, for guys, but I'm writing to women).
Footnote: if it is something serious, and needs to be dealt with, there are ways to deal with it (as per Matthew 18:15-17, among other verses...or in a crisis situation involving any sort of abuse you need to seek help immediately)...but playing the recording of the incident over and over again, whether it is a "big" thing or a "little" thing is not good either way...and that would be another post for another time.
3. Having a right balance moves from your head to your heart with right attitudes
If we do the martyr thing (~woe is me, my life is drudgery, he doesn't meet my needs, no body knows the trouble I've seen...~), we are not going to have a right attitude. I don't know if there is anyone who has a right attitude all the time (I doubt it), but when we feel that wrong attitude coming up, we go back, check our thoughts, and check that attitude, and begin to meditate on things that are pure, and lovely, and of good report, etc. (Philippians 4:8), instead of meditating on all of the offenses committed against us.
What you feed your heart and mind with also will have an effect...garbage in and garbage out as they say. Reading romance novels (even "Christian" ones), watching TV or movies where either unrealistically romantic perfect men are featured or where guys are bashed, or even listening to talk radio or reading the news where you start to think that the other side is about to get you (the balance between staying informed vs. becoming so freaked out by the news you don't enjoy life is another post too)...none of these things a happy wife do make. Listen to uplifting music or preaching, and think happy thoughts.
4. Then it moves from your heart on out of your mouth with your words
Life and death really are in the power of the tongue. You know that schoolyard chant? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words with never hurt me? Not true. Words sometimes hurt far more, and for a lot longer, than a broken bone.
The Bible commands husbands to love their wives, and for wives to respect their husbands. I went to a marriage retreat with dear husband a few years ago, and this was the theme...In short, a wife can fairly easily dish out love because we are wired for that. Respect, not so easily. Guys (mostly) need and thrive on respect from their wives, and one way they get it is through our words to them and about them.
What you think about eventually does come out of your heart and head, and onto your tongue. Ever find yourself saying, "I didn't mean to say that" or "I don't know where that came from?" Hmmm. If we were being honest, what we should say is that we didn't mean to say it out loud. Aside from slips of the tongue, most of the time what we say, however unintentionally, was in our brain or heart, like a pitcher in the bull pen waiting to be called into the game. It may not even be what you say but how you say it...sweetly or grouchily telling your darling when dinner will be done, for example.
Years ago, I was talking to Nancy Campbell of Above Rubies, and asked her for advice, when I don't feel like I am in love with my husband. Her answer is priceless. "Prophesy that you love him until your heart believes your mouth." Sisters, it does work. Deliberately plan to say something positive or encouraging,to him. Tell yourself, "I am so in love."
5. What is in your heart and your mind eventually is seen in your life too.
When you have not allowed yourself to dwell on negative things, when you have washed your mind of your list of "his faults" instead of adding new things on each day, and when you have deliberately spoken words of love to your husband (and children), all of this does affect how you respond to both husband and children in your every day. It really does work itself out into your life.
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Published on Yahoo News First Person |
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Written by Kimberly Eddy
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Wednesday, 04 August 2010 15:15 |
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I was pretty excited to get to write an article for Yahoo, through Associated Content, on the topic of how the recovery is affecting Michigan Auto Workers and Skilled Labor. They wanted someone who was either in that field, or closely related to someone in the field. The article is here.
I haven't read the comments below the article yet...I know how nasty people can be at Yahoo (It's probably turned into a mud fest I'm guessing). Are people being nice? I'm afraid to look. LOL
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Written by Kimberly Eddy
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Wednesday, 04 August 2010 00:00 |
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
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| Love |
| Jennifer Sosik |
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I've been meditating on love quite a bit lately, thus my reposting of an old article I wrote, paraphrasing this passage for Moms. I think that the longer I am alive, and the longer I walk with the Lord, the more blown away I am by His love for me, and His brand of love (agape love, translated here as "charity", and meaning a sort of self sacrificing unconditional love).
We all have things that we do to demonstrate our faith, but without love as the driving force, it's nothing at all. It's noise. It's vanity. It lacks the same punch that it would have if God's love were the motivation.
One of the most amazing things is that God loves first.
God doesn't wait for us to move towards Him; He loves us first.
God doesn't wait until we have shown sufficient love to Him first; He loves us first.
He LOVES US FIRST.
WOW.
He demonstrates His love toward us, "in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8).
Us, in weird human weakness and selfishness, we hold off until we see some reciprocity most of the time. We do a little and if it isn't received well, or responded to as we like, we pull back again. God's sort of love is a hard thing...loving others first, like He loves first.
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Written by Kimberly Eddy
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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 00:00 |
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20 Years Ago Today, I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior while walking through Prague, Czech Republic, on a backpacking journey to find myself after college. Instead He found me, and hasn't let me go. Prague will always be beautiful to me.
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| Lit Up Bridge at Dusk, Charles Bridge... |
| Panoramic Images |
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God is so faithful to lead and guide us down all of the right paths...even though sometimes it may only seem like we are lost (sometimes He takes us on the scenic route ;)). I reflect back on 20 years and it seems like forever ago...and yet it seems like only yesterday.
20 years is a long time...but then again, it really isn't.
I've crossed a mark...I've now spent more of my life as His child than not. Sola deo gloria.
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